6/23, 6/24 and 6/25

Andy and I fished the Muskies Inc. (Ch.69) tourney on Chautauqua last Saturday. We spent the day casting various spots between the middle and Southern ends of the lake. The bite was slow for us during the first 6 hours but we managed to catch 2 muskies over 30” (36 and 42) during the last 2 hours. We did not win any money as a few of the trollers took the top spots. (One troller smashed a 51” stud and another troller bagged a 48.5.).

We made several presentation adjustments during the tourney with no luck so we decided to stap on some smaller Medussas and speed fish them over and thru giant piles of baitfish. I was fishless with 0 follows and 45 minutes left to fish so I had nothing to lose.......On my second cast, the 36 came in hot and smoked me at boatside. This happened soon after Andy caught his 42 on the same Medussa! ( I had mentioned earlier this Spring that I was going to put in some serious time burning rubber to see what would happen.). It worked on the first try. This was the first local musky tourney I had ever fished and we had a great time!

The next day we started at 2pm and fished until dark-thirty chasing muskies. 15 yr. old Dalton was looking for his first musky but we did not sniff an esox except for the 18 incher that slammed my spinnerbait.

Monday was a good day chasing walleye and bass and also my first day of summer vacation. I had some bass-chasing guys looking to catch their first walleyes. We netted 9 or 10 walleye with the largest being 26” and lost another biggun half-way back that started surface-rolling and broke off one of the hooks. We also hit 13-15 bass with the largest being about 2.5 pounds and a small musky and small pike. It was also his first pike and musky. We were 1 trout away from the “cinco-slam” but we were too far away from the good trout water to make a run at that benchmark.